1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process of an electronic letter which is transferred by electronic mail (e-mail), and more particularly, to a multi-function apparatus and method for receiving and printing an electronic letter.
2. Description of the Background Art
As the Internet industry is rapidly spread, a variety of techniques and products associated with the Internet have considerably increased for the last several years. An electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus is such a product associated with the Internet.
The electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus receives an electronic letter, which is transferred by e-mail over the Internet, and automatically prints the received electronic letter. An e-mail printer or an Internet multi-function apparatus is such an electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus. Here, the e-mail printer is different from the Internet multi-function apparatus in that the operation of the e-mail printer is not associated with a personal computer while the Internet multi-function apparatus is associated with a personal computer or the like.
An earlier electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus accesses the server of an Internet service provider (ISP) at regular time intervals and logs into the accessed server with accounts which have been previously registered in the accessed server. When there is a letter transferred by e-mail to the address of any account with which the apparatus logs into the server, the apparatus receives and prints the electronic letter. According to such an electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus, e-mail letters are received and automatically printed at regular time intervals. Here, an earlier electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus which is used by a plurality of users sequentially logs in to an ISP server with a plurality of accounts, which have been previously registered in the ISP server which has been accessed, at regular time intervals and receives and prints all letters addressed to the accounts.
Such an earlier electronic letter receiving and printing multi-function apparatus continuously prints all letters, which are sequentially received, like a general facsimile machine. Consequently, the letters for different users are mixed so that it is difficult to intentionally manage the letters. In addition, when a letter addressed to a certain user is not supposed to be opened to the public in terms of business, personal reasons or security, the security of the letter cannot be preserved. Moreover, since every letter received from a server is automatically printed, letters which do not need to be printed are printed resulting in a waste of printing paper.